…the brain creates a “phantom” limb in an apparent attempt to preserve a unified sense of self. For the patient, the phantom limb is painful. The brain knows there is no limb; pain is the consequence of the incoherence between what the brain “sees” (no arm) and the brain’s “feeling” the presence of a phantom that it has created in its attempt to maintain a unified sense of self in continuity with the past. Such pain is not created by an external stimulus and cannot be eliminated by painkillers.